Discipline and Punish Pt. 01

Mary Jane was a smart girl.

She knew this because everyone had always said it. "What a smart girl that Mary Jane O'Connell is," her teachers in school had exclaimed, and they said it so often that Mary Jane began to believe it. She began to invest herself in the identity, to read in her spare time, and to study hard so as not to lose the reputation.

"Yes, she's a very smart girl," her mother always agreed. "She'll wind up the wife of a brilliant professor one day!" Mary Jane had accepted the prediction. She liked professors. Her father was a historian, and she always enjoyed the company of his friends from the university. She liked impressing them with her knowledge of literature and philosophy, hearing their theories on the world, and deciding whether or not she agreed with them. If it was to be her vocation to love and take care of a man, she'd like him to be an intelligent man. A nice house, a comfortable existence, a brilliant spouse, and his brilliant children to raise--what more could a smart girl ask for?

And so Mary Jane set out to seek the life that was expected of her. She graduated from Barnard College in 1972 with a major in French literature, then took a summer course in typing and landed a position as a receptionist at the Columbia library. Every day, she did her hair and makeup and dressed in carefully chosen clothing that was fashionable yet scholastic. She crimped herself into tight undergarments that realigned her flesh in just the right way, accentuating her bust and wrestling her stomach into a demure, shapely waist. She kept up her French and stayed up to date on all the most exciting developments in the field so that when she did meet a man who caught her eye, she would be pleasing to him, inside and out.

"You're too caught up in what men think of you," her roommate Sally told her on more than one occasion. Sally was the only female graduate student in the history department at Columbia. She wore pants, was on the pill, and only paid attention to men when it convenienced her to do so.

"So what if I am?" Mary Jane responded. "Is it so wrong to be marriage minded?" She'd seen the way the men at the Columbia history department treated Sally, their dismissal or outright hostility. "I don't want men to treat me the way they treat you."

Mary Jane's efforts at attracting a man achieved excellent results. She first caught the eye of an archaeology graduate student named Don. They had made eye contact at the entrance to the library. She'd seen his eyes flick down to peruse the curves of her bodiced body, and from that moment on she had known that she had him in the palm of her hand. They had seen each other for five months before she broke off the romance--her attention had wandered to Harper, a biology professor with broad shoulders and a great, generous laugh. After Harper there came Roger, with his shy smile and introspective charm, then John, with his poetry and subversive wit.

It was a game, this flirtation, and Mary Jane was good at it. She walked a difficult tightrope with virtuosic ease. She perfected the art of appearing beautiful without looking like she cared too much about her appearance. She modulated her language to show her potential lovers that she was intelligent but not a threat their own intellectual prowess. She tamed her emotions so as to appear interested but not desperate, available but never too available. If there was a battle of the sexes, Mary Jane was surely winning it. She had all the steps down like second nature, and she danced in circles around everyone in her sequence of suitors.

That is, until Benjamin entered the fray.

Mary Jane first laid eyes on him on a weeknight in late October. She had just gotten back to her apartment after working late at the library. Exhausted, she went straight to her room to change out of her work clothes. She slipped her dress over her shoulders and unclipped her tight-fitting undergarments, just like she always did. She breathed a sigh of relief as her flesh realigned itself, as if her breasts and her stomach were remembering what it was like to feel the pull of gravity again. She changed into her nightgown and bathrobe, removed her makeup, and pinned her hair up over her head.

"Dinner by the TV again tonight?" She called out to Sally, making her way to the kitchen and opening the freezer. She heard no response. "Sally?" She took out two TV dinners and preheated the oven. "I'm making chicken pot pies," she announced to no one. She lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and started flipping through Columbia University Press's fall 1975 catalog.

It was this state of undress--cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, TV dinners thawing in the oven, body void of all the tinctures and ornaments that gave it its allure--that Benjamin walked in on her. He came out rather abruptly from Sally's room. His sandy brown hair was disheveled, and he was attempting to straighten it with his hands.

"Oh!" Mary Jane exclaimed. The cigarette almost fell out of her mouth onto her book. She slammed the book down onto the counter, hastened to put out the cigarette in the ashtray by the counter, and hugged her bathrobe around her. "I'm sorry, I didn't...I didn't realize we were having a guest," she flustered. She resisted a wild impulse to run out of the room. She felt naked, perhaps even more so than if she'd been without clothing entirely. Men, she knew, did not want to see all the work, all the pulling and painting and prodding, that went into making a woman look beautiful. Particularly not a man as pretty as this one. For pretty was the right word to describe this man--not handsome, but pretty, with his wide grey eyes and pink, pliant lips.

"I normally wouldn't have received guests dressed like this, you know," Mary Jane stammered. "It's just, of course, I didn't realize you were coming over, and well, you've caught me at a bad time, I normally...I'm much more...would you like some tea?"

Throughout the whole monologue, the stranger was staring back at her with an amused expression. Mary Jane found it utterly disconcerting. It was not so much the fact of his gaze, but rather the substance of it, that affected her. He was looking at her with such steady intensity that Mary Jane felt as if he were seeing into every pore of her being. His grey eyes took in every aspect of her body with a measured, knowing expression: the messy, pinned up hair, the old terry cloth bathrobe, the book. He smiled. "No thank you, I was just leaving."

"Well that's alright, then." Mary Jane held out a stiff hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr.... what was your name?"

"You can call me Benjamin," he said, and returned the handshake.

"Mary Jane."

Benjamin motioned to the book on the table. "You work at the university press?"

"At the library," she explained. "You?"

"Comparative Lit. I've just gotten tenure, actually."

Before Mary Jane could respond, Sally emerged from her room, wearing a nightgown and an exasperated expression. "I thought I told you to get out," she snapped at Benjamin.

He hurried to put on his jacket and sling his backpack over his shoulder. "Yes, sorry! I was just about to go." He nodded at Sally, smiled at Mary Jane, and left.

Mary Jane gave Sally a quizzical look. "What the hell happened?"

"Bastard wouldn't fuck me," Sally said. "Said he wanted to talk or do some sort of weird fetish stuff, I don't know."

Mary Jane felt a prickle of curiosity. "What kind of stuff?"

"Something to do with power...you know, some masculine bullshit. Anyway, I said that if I'd wanted to have some man talk down to me I'd have gone to class." Sally lit a cigarette and began smoking. A glint of defiance lingered in her eyes. "Don't tell me you're interested him."

Mary Jane shrugged. Sally rolled her eyes.

***

Mary Jane was not like Sally. She was not able to simply banish a man from her mind as if she were brushing a fly off her shoulder. Benjamin lingered in her thoughts all throughout the next week. She found herself rehearsing her meeting with him over and over in her head, wondering how the interaction might have gone if she had been dressed and makeupped, if she had said different things or not been caught so off guard. She found herself aching to know what he had said to Sally, what hidden desires he had bared that Sally had dismissed so brashly.

A week later, Mary Jane was making her way through the inter-library loan requests when she found a request from a Dr. Benjamin Krakauer in the Comparative Literature department. She ran a finger over the note. He had written the request in neat, formal cursive: "Surveiller et Punir by Michel Foucault." She translated the words in her head: Surveillance and Punishment. It was an intriguing title. She recognized that name--Michel Foucault. She'd seen his work mentioned more than once in the library catalog.

The book arrived a week earlier than expected. Mary Jane was running the front desk when it came, and when opened the envelope and saw the neat little French volume, she could not resist--she slid it under the desk, opened the first page, and began to read. "Part One: Torture," it said. She raised her eyebrows and read on. What ensued over the next two pages was one of the most lurid, gruesome depictions of torture she had ever read. The details of the scene--in which a man in 18th century France was burned and decapitated--were horrifically, deliciously medieval: the burnt flesh, the pincers, the public spectacle. Mary Jane found that her eyes were glued to the page, despite her revulsion, by a sadistic curiosity (or perhaps, she thought, a masochistic one). Was this what Benjamin had been wanting to read, she wondered? Did he know what he was getting into?

She had just about had enough of the scene, when it changed abruptly. There was a break in the text, and the author began to describe a very different kind of punishment: a prison. She read about the regimented order imposed upon the prisoners of this particular 19th century institution--getting up at six, two hours of instruction, nine hours of work, prayer--under the incessant surveillance of the prison guards.

She brought the book absentmindedly to her lips and tapped on the cover with her painted nails. She understood the exercise the author was posing. Two different kinds of violence: two different kinds of power. One spectacular, grotesque--the other, cold, calculated, and yet somehow more insidious.

"Either we just ordered the same book, or you've been snooping around other people's library orders." Benjamin's voice cut through her pondering.

She snapped the book shut with a start. For the second time this week, he found herself at a loss for words under his steady gaze. "I was just--"

"Taking a little peek?" He was grinning at her. His expression was exacting, but kind.

She returned his gaze with a sheepish grin. "I was curious," she admitted. "The title intrigued me." She noticed the telltale flick of his eyes as they took in the curves of her body beneath her skirt and blouse. The subtle curl of his lips around the edges gave her a spur of confidence. "And also..." she took a deep breath, "also the fact that it was you who ordered it."

Benjamin nodded. There was a knowing expression behind his eyes, as if he had known all along the effect he was having on her and had just been waiting for her to say it. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I was looking for a grad student to read this with me. Someone I could bounce ideas off of. I'm assuming you read French?"

"Yes!"

"Then it's settled. I'll take the book and read it, then I'll lend it to you, and we can talk about it together. Over dinner, maybe?"

"I'd love that."

"My treat."

***

Benjamin took Mary Jane to a modest Italian restaurant, where they sat across from each other, the book between them, and began to discuss. As soon as he began to talk, it was clear that Benjamin had a flair for the dramatic, which Mary Jane found quite endearing. "How does power work?" Benjamin speared a shrimp with his fork and gesticulated with it enthusiastically. He paused for effect.

"Do you want me to answer that question?" Mary Jane interjected.

"No, no, it was a rhetorical question. How does power work. That's the question Foucault is trying to answer in this book, right?" He looked at her pointedly.

"Right," she answered, on cue.

"Precisely," he declared. His eyes brightened as another idea occurred to him. "Not only that, he's making a claim: that 'how does power work' is a question worth asking."

"Well said," Mary Jane was nodding and maintaining eye contact with him. It was all part of her usual strategy: to make him feel smart, to make her commentary a compliment, not a threat, to his own intelligence. "You're very observant."

He gave her a knowing look. "I know what you're doing."

"What?"

"You don't have to dumb yourself down for me, you know. My ego's not that fragile."

Mary Jane returned his knowing look. "All men say that."

"Yes, but I mean it. I want to know what you really think."

"Why? I'm not a professor. I don't have a PhD. Why would you want to know what I really think? Why would that be useful to you?"

He hesitated, then said simply, "Because I saw the look in your eyes when you first read it. And I wanted to know what was behind it."

Of all the answers he could have given, this one took Mary Jane by surprise. She had expected him to say what most men said: that he liked a woman with brains, that women didn't show their intelligence enough, that he wanted a woman who read more than beauty magazines. She had heard all these lines before. Benjamin's statement was of a different kind. If he was to be believed, he wanted to know what she thought, not because of some imagined notion of how she ought to behave, but simply because he was curious.

"What do you say?" He was looking at her steadily, and his eyes seemed as if they were observing every miniscule movement of the muscles in her face--every evidence of pleasure or discomfort, arousal or hesitation. It occurred to Mary Jane that perhaps it was not an option to hide her intelligence. Whatever she said, those piercing grey eyes would see right through her.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, then. Foucault writes about power, right? Well, the way he writes about power, I see that power in my everyday life."

"How so?" He leaned in toward her.

"In...in the way we discipline ourselves. That's the power of the prison, right? Not just to punish: to train. To train us to be certain kinds of people."

"And how do you discipline yourself?"

Mary Jane considered this. "What I wear. How I act around men. When to...when to laugh at his jokes. When to yield. When to submit."

"I think that's very insightful." Benjamin twirled his fork around his pasta. He started to ask a question, then seemed to think better of it and stayed silent.

She raised an eyebrow. "What were you going to say?"

"I...well..." He took a bite and wiped his lips with his napkin. "Do you...do you submit because you want to, or because you have to?"

Mary Jane blinked. It had never occurred to her to probe the difference between the two. "Both, I think." She considered the question further, then decided to change her answer. "Because I want to," she admitted.

He nodded. He was still looking at her with that pointed, penetrating gaze, but there seemed to be more intention behind it than ever before, a furious determination. After a pregnant pause, he spoke, this time in a low voice. "I think that Foucault's insights about power speak most clearly to those of us whose desires are...divergent from the norm. I'm wondering if you know what I mean."

"No, I don't."

He seemed to struggle to find the right words. "Mary Jane..." he began at last. "Do you know what S&M is?"

The word conjured up an image that Mary Jane had once glimpsed in a porn magazine, of a severe looking woman in a black leather corset with a riding crop clasped in her hands. "Like, dominatrixes?"

"Yes, that's part of it. But more broadly, it's a practice of playing with power. Playing with...with giving yourself over to someone else, being under their control."

Mary Jane's heart began to race in jumps and skips. To play with power. The words reverberated in her stomach, in her fingertips, between her thighs. She had never before phrased these desires explicitly, but the more she thought about it, the more correct it seemed. To swept up by a man, to look beautiful for him, to please him. It was all about power. It had always been. She realized that her cheeks were flushed, and that Benjamin, with his exacting gaze, must surely have noticed. "Is it just me," she probed, "or has our conversation moved from theory to practice?"

He reached across the table and took one of her wrists in his, squeezing it with a steady, persistent pressure. "No. It's not just you."

She hesitated. "You...you want to control me?"

He shook his head. "Not exactly. I want you to lend yourself to me. Like...like a library book." His grip on her wrist tightened. "I thought you might enjoy it. That was my hypothesis."

Mary Jane felt as if she were glued to the spot, pinned between Benjamin's grasp and his gaze. It occurred to her, at the back of her mind, that the most prudent option available to her right now would be simply to leave. It was absurd, the stuff of fantasies, of pornography, of women in seedy clubs with black leather corsets--not the territory of Columbia librarians in search of respectable husbands. "I'm not that kind of girl," she told him, but even as she said it, she knew that her tone was unconvincing.

He smirked. "I don't care what kind of girl you are. What I'm interested in is what you want. What you think about at night."

Did he see, she wondered, the immediate effect his words had on her? Did he know the scenes that flashed through her mind--fantasies that probed the depths of powerlessness, that she hardly dared to admit to herself. Could she really do it? Could she make the choice to slide those fantasies into the realm of reality? It was preposterous. And yet it made perfect sense.

She looked at him straight in the eye and said, unwaveringly: "Show me."

He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. "Thank you," he said with a broad smile.

He stood up and repositioned his chair so that it was right next to hers, then sat down and put an arm around her shoulder. He leaned in and whispered in her ear, "We'll begin now."

"Right here?" Mary Jane squeaked. "In public?"

"Yes. You trust me, right?"

"I..." Mary Jane paused, considering. She had no real reason to trust this man, but that did not alter the fact that she did. She trusted him with every pore of her being, whether or not it was prudent to do so. "Yes, I do."

"Then you'll do exactly as I say." With one hand, he took hold of the back of her neck, while the other gripped her upper thigh over her skirt. His grasp was firm, steadying her, anchoring her to the spot. No one who glanced at them in the restaurant would see anything other than a young couple embracing each other. "Breathe in," he intoned. She breathed in, her heart racing. "Breathe out." Again, she obeyed. "Breathe in." She drew in a breath, then waited for him to tell her to breathe out. But he seemed in no hurry to let her exhale. His grip on her thigh and her neck was unrelenting, his patience unwavering, as he watched Mary Jane hold her breath for him. As the seconds ticked by, the effort to keep her breath in intensified. She glanced at Benjamin, asking permission with her eyes to breathe again, but he told her sharply, "Look straight ahead, not at me." She obeyed. At last, when the air had built up in her chest and was threatening to burst out of her, he took mercy. "You can breathe again."